Artists

, Olivier Foulon

Press release

The exhibition takes its title from a 1933-Balthus-painting, depicting a street in Paris.

La rue brings a series of Brussels street photographs to Cologne’s Belgisches Viertel, where everyone vaque à ses propres occupations, each going their own way.

La rue 1-11 depicts a Brussels street in a series of eleven photographs. Eleven photographs taken to catch the echo of the Balthus-painting.

Twenty-seven seconds in which the scene evoques, evolves and echoes the fugitive 1933-Balthus-street-painting.

In 1933, Walter Benjamin fled from Berlin to Paris, soon followed by Klee’s Angelus Novus. Running forward, Benjamin left his Angelus and his papers behind in summer 1940. This summer, Angelus Novus was sent for a two months stay, from the Israel Museum, Jerusalem to the Bode Museum, Berlin—where I stood before it for the first time.

La rue is my flotilla — my Madeleen de Proust, my Handala, my Sumud.

Balthus returned to the street in 1954-55, painting his Passage du Commerce, as Picasso returned to Delacroix’ Les Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartement.Olivier Foulon Cologne, 5.9.2025